Linder on Morrissey in Guardian (18/01/2020)

A very nice interview with Linder Sterling in today’s The Guardian:

How the artist Linder went from Orgasm Addict to Chatsworth House - Observer Design

Excerpt:

She also became known as Morrissey’s muse and went on to photograph him extensively in the early 90s as he toured the US. “We shared the same taste, liked the same books,” she says. “We shared a house for a brief period in Whalley Range – it was a red-light district then.” With his counterintuitive views on the far-right For Britain party, Morrissey is a touchy subject these days, but Linder is loyal. “We’ve always disagreed,” she says. “It’s a healthy disagreement, the sort that comes with unconditional love.”

Just a shame about the unnecessary framing, The Guardian.

full
 
Last edited by a moderator:
If somebody doesn't like black people, for example, who am I to preach to them on the wonders of diversity?

I couldn't care less if Morrissey (or indeed anybody) is a racist. It's their free choice, their opinion. There are plenty blacks out there who like to blame their bad day on whitey. That's their prerogative as far as I'm concerned. The whole concept of racism is losing its steam. As almost anyone can now so easily be cast as a racist for a myriad of random reasons it is ceasing to hold the same power as when it actually meant real discrimination.

And being a fan of Morrissey makes him my lifelong and most important friend despite how you choose to interpret this.

I wouldn't mind if it was just moaning & whinging that other people had more chips on their plate (we can sort the chips out) - but I would have serious concerns about someone who genuinely thought the colour of their skin made them superior to another person. I don't think anyone coming from that point of view would be a decent artist. You need some universal empathy.
 
People and the media never give blacks hassle for their opinions. It is only whites who get that.

Reverse the Jussie Smollett situation with a white man and he would be serving a long sentence in prison for race hate.

Yes they do! Poor Azealia Banks has been hounded about her mad gibberings. Kanye gets cancelled on a regular basis.

Jussie Smollett is a laughing stock who will have to work very hard or be very lucky to get his reputation back.
 
I wouldn't mind if it was just moaning & whinging that other people had more chips on their plate (we can sort the chips out) - but I would have serious concerns about someone who genuinely thought the colour of their skin made them superior to another person. I don't think anyone coming from that point of view would be a decent artist. You need some universal empathy.
Let me whisper this. Nobody, and I mean nobody, thinks any less of a person because of the colour of their skin. That's the real elephant in the room.

White flight, for example, is because of behaviour, not skin colour.
 
Let me whisper this. Nobody, and I mean nobody, thinks any less of a person because of the colour of their skin. That's the real elephant in the room.

White flight, for example, is because of behaviour, not skin colour.
Please spare us the semantic configurations of racism. It's not intelligent, it's not insightful. You still sound idiotic.
 
What about my posts would suggest I'm trolling? I've been a fan of Morrissey for decades and I don't let accusations of his racism (whether one would consider them valid or overblown is beside the point) necessarily sway my opinion of him. I've always found him to be a little ignorant on the topic of race, but that doesn't alter the emotional connection I have to his best work. What's turned me off of Morrissey in the past few years is his indefensibly bad recorded output, his dull setlists and his insistence on doubling-down on his ignorance, self-pity, dull-as-f*** war with the press and so on. Flirting with 'controversial views' as a press tactic works a lot better when you've got the artistic brilliance to sort of balance it out and complicate things. Unfortunately for Moz, he hasn't really written a good song since about 2004.

In any case, I have more of an issue with Morrissey's sycophantic fans than I do with the man himself.

The issue with the fans is probably what I was picking up on then.

I love Moz's latest stuff!! (Even the harsh production is growing on me - though a bit of remixing would be a good thing).
 
Yes they do! Poor Azealia Banks has been hounded about her mad gibberings. Kanye gets cancelled on a regular basis.

Jussie Smollett is a laughing stock who will have to work very hard or be very lucky to get his reputation back.
Banks is an insufferably obnoxious person. Her attitude and behaviour gets her in trouble. Kanye is mentally ill due to the skunk weed he smokes. He says something interesting then doesn't have the lucid intelligence to back it up in a debate. Like when he said blacks are choosing their own slavery - he meant they had slavery in the head and need to move on to better themselves rather than feeling victimised. That's clever. But the press etc twisted his words to mean he was talking about actual historical slavery. It's as if he has moments of lucid intelligence as he sits and smokes... then it disappears, but it's too late because he's uttered the words already to the press. And they love it. It's sensation.

Stormzy basically said everyone in the UK was racist. This was coming from an ex-knifeman and avowed mugger who has a career built on this violent reputation. What hassle does he get from the press? They love him.
 
Let me whisper this. Nobody, and I mean nobody, thinks any less of a person because of the colour of their skin. That's the real elephant in the room.

White flight, for example, is because of behaviour, not skin colour.

Bad behaviour is caused by poverty, lack of opportunity & maybe some rotten social messaging that needs to be changed. It's not like everyone who lives in boring suburbia has a suburban gene that stops us running amok. We just have more money & stuff to do & we're repressed.
 
Banks is an insufferably obnoxious person. Her attitude and behaviour gets her in trouble. Kanye is mentally ill due to the skunk weed he smokes. He says something interesting then doesn't have the lucid intelligence to back it up in a debate. Like when he said blacks are choosing their own slavery - he meant they had slavery in the head and need to move on to better themselves rather than feeling victimised. That's clever. But the press etc twisted his words to mean he was talking about actual historical slavery. It's as if he has moments of lucid intelligence as he sits and smokes... then it disappears, but it's too late because he's uttered the words already to the press. And they love it. It's sensation.

Stormzy basically said everyone in the UK was racist. This was coming from an ex-knifeman and avowed mugger who has a career built on this violent reputation. What hassle does he get from the press? They love him.

You're admitting they get flack.

Stormzy has been running a brilliant pr campaign, his timing has been great - but as we all know - the wind changes. He could fall out of favour any moment.
 
You're admitting they get flack.

Stormzy has been running a brilliant pr campaign, his timing has been great - but as we all know - the wind changes. He could fall out of favour any moment.
They get press, not flak. There's a difference. Stormzy plays the game far too well to fall out of favour any time soon. Ever noticed how loose cannons are never taken on these days? He's got a work ethic, I'll give him that.

Back in the 80s Moz got press. It was press disguised as flak. People read it and were entertained, never outraged. Just like people now read about Kanye or Banks or Stormzy and are entertained.

Now Morrissey only gets flak.

There would never be a Dave Haslam-style 'Let's hate on Stormzy' event near one of his gigs no matter what he said.
 
You're not nearly as intelligent or insightful as you think you are. You just seem really threatened by black people.
The reality is that I allow nobody on this earth to have the power to be threatening to me simply because of their skin shade. I fear nobody because of skin colour. Fear doesn't work like that.

That makes me much more intelligent than absolutely everyone who espouses woke, for example. In other words, the real racists, which is people who read skin colour into everything.
 
The reality is that I allow nobody on this earth to have the power to threaten me simply because the colour of their skin is different to mine. I fear nobody because of skin colour.

That makes me much more intelligent than absolutely everyone who espouses woke. In other words, the real racists, which is people who read skin colour into everything.
Please spare us. No one thinks that racism comes from a purely aesthetic disdain for a particular amount of melanin in another person's skin tone.
 
Please spare us. No one thinks that racism comes from a purely aesthetic disdain for a particular amount of melanin in another person's skin tone.
You, for one, do. You declared that I feared 'black' people. I simply denied this.

Fear is more complicated and based on reasons other than somebody's colour.
 
You, for one, do. You declared that I feared 'black' people. I simply denied this.
I'm not going to play some tedious game of semantics with you. It doesn't take a genius to see your fear and paranoia of black people, it's in every single post you make about "foreigners breeding" and "avowed muggers" and whatnot.
 
I'm not going to play some tedious game of semantics with you. It doesn't take a genius to see your fear and paranoia of black people, it's in every single post you make about "foreigners breeding" and "avowed muggers" and whatnot.
People are not blank units or machine parts that mechanically slot together. Culture and its differences is something you need to sit down and think hard about. What you've just said is a tedious cliche.

When the biggest star in my country (Stormzy) is an ex-mugger and actually proud of it, to me that's an issue.
 
People are not blank units or machine parts that mechanically slot together. Culture and its differences is something you need to sit down and think hard about. What you've just said is a tedious cliche.

When the biggest star in my country (Stormzy) is an ex-mugger and actually proud of it, to me that's an issue.
Is the person endlessly whining about perceived double-standards between black people and white people seriously accusing me of employing tedious cliches? Every word out of your mouth is straight from the tired, old racist dogwhistle handbook.
 
They get press, not flak. There's a difference. Stormzy plays the game far too well to fall out of favour any time soon. Ever noticed how loose cannons are never taken on these days? He's got a work ethic, I'll give him that.

Back in the 80s Moz got press. It was press disguised as flak. People read it and were entertained, never outraged. Just like people now read about Kanye or Banks or Stormzy and are entertained.

Now Morrissey only gets flak.

There would never be a Dave Haslam-style 'Let's hate on Stormzy' event near one of his gigs no matter what he said.

Dave is probably annoyed that someone he was using for clout went & embarrassed him in public by going off-script. From what I can glean, apart from being a DJ, his sole means of publicity is talking about Manchester. The Manchester Arts Scene. How Diverse Manchester Is. And What Thatcher Did To Manchester.

He's unbelievably boring**

**Not a bad trait, but not a great one for getting attention when you have books to flog.
 
Going to harp on about politics again - but one thing I've found really weird is how angry people were with Morrissey over his anti-EU stance.

I'm pro-EU because I think we need an alliance & we have to be realistic about the global economy.

But it is just an alliance.

And I remember how bad the fallout was from the EU imposing austerity on Ireland in 2008 to 2014. The Irish were angry about it - which might explain where Moz's dislike of the EU came from. He wasn't banging on about it in the 80s or 90s as far as I can tell & it was an issue then. (This is the kind of mitigation a pr would have dug up & used, whether he liked it or not).

Found this - https://www.irishtimes.com/business...-ireland-by-berlin-says-ex-official-1.4094603

And the thought was prompted by this old article: https://www.clashmusic.com/features/7-of-the-best-morrissey-solo-cuts

(I never sleep).
 

Trending Threads

Back
Top Bottom